Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Sewing projects

Between Pinterest and various blogs that I follow, I’ve been
making a few things lately from other people's tutorials.They aren’t
really the type of thing I usually cover here, but I think they came out pretty
well, so I thought I’d share.

Casserole Dish and Carry Cases

At Christmas my sister, Sara, and I made some etched casserole
dishes with insulated carry cases.My
sister is a real-deal artist/architect/designer and has skills!It was really fun to make these together, I miss collaborating with my
sisters.We made two sets plus a smaller dish from three different tutorials: We used the one from 2 Little Hooligans for the carry case, modified by this post on Homemade by Jill. Then we used this tutorial for the etching from Make It and Love It.

Beautiful Kenyan batiks. I have a mei tai in the left hand fabric my friend Em made me.

Sara copied the wheat design from the batik for this one.

This dish we etched along the sides. It's an aspen leaf.

Cost break down:

Dishes ($14.19 for one dish, plus $17.29 for a set)

Etching Cream ($17.98 per 10oz bottle) note- If I had it to do over again, I'd just buy the 3oz bottle

Contact Paper and painter's tape (free, left from home renovations 6 years ago)

Cloth (free, gifted)

Webbing ($15)

Velcro (can't find receipt, I think it was about $7)

Insulation ($11.98)

Total: $83.44 for 5 items, more or less $16.69 per item.

I know it sounds expensive, but this covered 3 families on my gift list, it was fun to make, and it was split between me and my sister. (Plus I now have a freaking lifetime supply of etching cream.)

Reversible Pinafore

I also made this sweet little reversible pinafore for Elizabeth from a
tutorial on Smashed Peas and Carrots.I’ve been staring at this page for months waiting for Elizabeth to be
big enough to wear one, but it still came out too big for her.She’ll be ready before summer, I hope!I’m a little obsessed with pinafores.Somewhere between an apron and a dress, I
think they are so cute and versatile and useful! I just might start wearing them myself...if I can improve my sewing. I made one small change to the pattern. Inspired by this other tutorial from dee*construction, instead of cutting all the pieces separately then sewing them together, I taped my pattern pieces together and cut them as one continual piece. It's not as cloth-conservative, but I really like the simplicity of it. Next time I might be brave enough to draft my own pattern!

Cost break down:

Cloth ($13.98)

Buttons ($2.39 for 5, $2.39/5 = $.48 x 4 = $1.91)

Thread ($1.23)

Total: $17.12 (A local
boutique sells them for $40)

It's cute, but next time I'll get bigger buttons and try to make it fit better. Since it came over Elizabeth's knees, she got so mad trying to crawl that she attempted to rip the pinafore off!

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About Me

My name is Laura, and I live in central Virginia. I'm an enthusiastic but untrained crafter and cook who likes to try new projects. If you have a project you'd like me to analyze, let me know! Leave a comment or email me at tryitorbuyit@gmail.com, and I'll see what I can do.